WASHINGTON, March 8, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Congress will consider a new drug approval pathway to encourage development of critically needed, lifesaving antibiotics as part of a strategy to address the public health crisis of antibiotic resistance. The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) proposed the new pathway, the "Special Population Limited Medical Use (SPLMU)" mechanism, to provide an important new approval option for companies interested in developing drugs to treat patients with serious infections where few or no treatment options exist.

"Antimicrobial resistance is unequivocally one of the world's greatest public health threats, and we've been sounding the alarm about it and the lack of new antibiotics in development for years," said Brad Spellberg, MD, co-chair of IDSA's Antimicrobial Availability Task Force. "This new mechanism provides the opportunity to address this public health crisis while there is still time to fix it."

The SPLMU mechanism streamlines the approval pathway and enables pharmaceutical companies to study SPLMU drugs in far fewer patients than currently is required, more rapidly, and at significantly less cost because they are intended for more targeted use within a special population of patients who lack other treatment options. SPLMU designation reserves a drug for use in specific populations in which the benefits outweigh the risks, and encourages prudent use of the drug to slow the rate of resistance.

"The proposed SPLMU drug approval mechanism will bring critically needed innovation to the anti-infective pipeline, encouraging antibiotic development and lowering the hurdles to getting these critically needed drugs to patients who desperately need them," said Robert Guidos, vice president of public policy and government relations at IDSA. "In addition, we've designed it to foster antimicrobial stewardship, so these drugs will be used only when appropriate, extending their lifesaving power."